CMAT 2016 Analysis

CMAT 2016 Analysis

The CMAT conducted by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) was held yesterday i.e 17th January 2016. More than 400 b-schools are listed that accept CMAT scores. This year around 1.25 lakh candidates took the test. The results will be declared on 21st January 2016.

The exam began at 9:30 am and ended at 12:30 am but students had started reaching the various centres by 8:00 am. They had to undergo a security check and document verification post that. Being a computer based exam, it remained glitch-free to a large extent as compared to the previous years’ experience. Only a few issues were reported.

There were 100 questions comprising of 4 sections- Quantitative Techniques and Data Interpretation, Logical Reasoning, Language Comprehension and General Awareness. The questions carried 4 marks for the right answer and negative marking of -1/4 for every wrong answer.

Quant and Language comprehension were easier compared to Logical reasoning and General Awareness. The difficulty level in Quantitative Technique was moderate with a few tricky questions. Overall this section was a scoring section. The language comprehension pattern stuck to the usual paper pattern. There were 3 Reading Comprehension passages with around 500-600 words and were shorter than those of CAT 2015. This section though, as usual, was time-consuming. The logical reasoning section was also time-consuming and those who spent more time solving it would have run short of time in other sections. General Awareness was the most difficult section but if a candidate knew most answers, he could finish solving it in 10-15 minutes.

Clearing the sectional cut-offs

For the quantitative technique section, attempting 18-20 correct answers on 25 would be enough. For the English language comprehension section, attempting 16-18 correct answers would be enough. Getting 15-17 correct answers in the Logical reasoning section would be more than sufficient and attempting 16-18 correct answers in the General awareness section would do the job of placing the test-taker in a good b-school. Overall, scoring anything above 170-180 would be considered a good score.